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Corruption

Ecuador Votes Sunday Amid Corruption Scandals And Violence

April 11, 2025 Greg Grandin and Mark Weisbrot, Miami Herald. , , ,
Ecuadorians will return to the polls this Sunday for a decisive presidential runoff between the right-wing incumbent Daniel Noboa and leftist challenger Luisa González. The closely contested race follows a first-round election in February where neither candidate secured the required majority, with Noboa receiving 44.17% of the vote and González 44%. The election unfolds against a backdrop of escalating violence, including by state security forces, rising poverty, power outages and widespread public discontent. Noboa, son of the richest man in the country, was elected 18 months ago in a special election to serve out what remained of the term of Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap election to avoid a likely impeachment trial on corruption charges.

Trump Team Hired Man Who Pushed A Scam IRS Called ‘Worst Of The Worst’

February 24, 2025 Peter Elkind, ProPublica. , , , ,
Even as he has vowed to eliminate “every dollar of waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal budget and operations,” the new acting administrator of the General Services Administration, Stephen Ehikian, has appointed a senior adviser whose firm used to specialize in tax transactions that a bipartisan Senate committee excoriated and that the IRS branded as “abusive” and among “the worst of the worst tax scams.” The adviser has been battling the tax agency in court over $4 billion in disallowed deductions for thousands of his clients.

The Fall Of Eric Adams

February 22, 2025 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
New York City residents are wondering if mayor Eric Adams will resign, or be removed from office by the governor, or be summoned to an Inability Committee , or limp along ineffectively until his term ends on December 31, 2025. The city’s mayoralty is hanging by a thread with four Deputy Mayors resigning, and top staff under indictment or leaving. Depending on a judge’s ruling, Adams may no longer be under indictment himself because Donald Trump interceded with the United States Attorney on his behalf. So egregious was the action that six prosecutors with solid republican bona fides resigned rather than sign onto the obvious travesty of justice.

Meditations On The Notion That Obama ‘Never Had Any Scandals’

February 21, 2025 Caitlin Johnstone. , , , ,
Now that Trump is back in office I’m again seeing Democrats posting fondly about Barack Obama and how wonderful it was to have a president whose worst scandal was wearing a brown suit once. During the first Trump administration such sentiments were a great way to go viral on Liberal Twitter. And the thing about this genre of tweet is that they’re kind of right — Obama didn’t have any “scandals” of the level we see from Trump. But the fact that the evil things Obama did weren’t considered scandalous says profoundly ugly things about the kind of society we are living in.

Elbit Out Of South Carolina Exposes Government Complicity In Genocide

January 4, 2025 Elbit Out Of South Carolina, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
Ladson, SC - January 2, 2025 –  On Thursday, North Charleston Police arrested a local artist participating in a picket of Elbit Systems at their facility in Ladson. The protester is part of the group Elbit Out of SC, a coalition of local organizations and concerned citizens upset with the company’s role in the ongoing genocide in Palestine. For months the coalition has picketed the facility, canvassed nearby neighborhoods, and spoken out at Charleston County Council meetings to raise awareness about the weapons Elbit Systems is producing in our community.

How Fascism Came

December 24, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , ,
President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease. The loss of basic democratic norms began long before Trump, which paved the road to an American totalitarianism. Deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, unchecked predatory corporations, including the health-care industry, wholesale surveillance of every American, social inequality, an electoral system that is plagued by legalized bribery, endless and futile wars, the largest prison population in the world, but most of all feelings of betrayal, stagnation and despair, are a toxic brew that culminate in an inchoate hatred of the ruling class and the institutions they have deformed to exclusively serve the rich and the powerful.

The Eighth Continent Is The Continent Of Sleaze

December 13, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
The eighth continent is the Continent of Sleaze. You and I have never been there, only heard rumours about it. On that continent, there are rivers of money in which corporate executives bathe and from which they extract whatever they want in order to increase their power, privilege, and property. The corporate executives venture out to lay their hands on the wealth of the world and carry it back to their Continent of Sleaze. What remains is dust and shadows, barely enough for people to survive so that they can continue to labour and produce more social wealth for the Continent of Sleaze.

Top Israeli Court Rejects Netanyahu’s Request To Delay Criminal Trial

November 14, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , ,
The Jerusalem District Court rejected on 13 November a request made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay his testimony in his corruption trial by 10 weeks. The court said the premier has already had five months to prepare for his testimony, which is scheduled for 2 December. “We were not convinced that a substantial change in circumstances has occurred which would justify a change to the date we set in our [original] decision.” As a result, Netanyahu will be forced to take the stand. Hours prior to the court ruling, a representative of the Israeli State Attorney’s Office, Yehudit Tirosh, said the “prime minister can’t dictate the schedule for his trial and testimony.”

COP29 CEO Caught Facilitating Oil And Gas Deals During Climate Summit

November 9, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
Chief Executive Officer of the United Nations COP29 Climate Change Conference Elnur Soltanov has been recorded by Global Witness apparently agreeing to help facilitate fossil fuel industry deals at the summit, reported The Guardian. A member of the campaign organization posed as a fake oil and gas representative offering to sponsor the event in exchange for assistance with the deals. “COP29 officials abused their positions by facilitating talks about oil and gas deals at a climate conference, pitching a dystopian future which includes fossil fuels ‘perhaps forever,’” a spokesperson for Global Witness said in a press release. “Petrostates are perfecting a sinister playbook which sees COP as just another business opportunity for polluters.”

Promise Of Change In Puerto Rico

October 13, 2024 Berta Joubert-Ceci, Resumen English. , , ,
With each passing day, Puerto Rico sinks deeper into a neoliberal process that threatens its very existence. From the purely geological issue, with supposed legal approvals for construction in coastal locations that involve the removal of mangroves and corals that are the natural barriers against coastal erosion, to the displacement of communities that give way to luxury housing for millionaire foreigners. There is a replacement of our population. Basic health and education services are almost nonexistent. In short, life in Puerto Rico has become very difficult. While our central problem is the colonial state, it is imperative to stop this destructive bleeding.

Eric Adams And The Death Of Black Politics

October 12, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
We at Black Agenda Report were always skeptical that Black people would make any progress under the administration of New York City mayor Eric Adams. In our 2021 article, Elections and the Illusion of Black Political Power, this columnist wrote, “Adams speaks favorably of the business community, hence the campaign haul, and real estate developers and other wealthy New Yorkers made clear he was their choice. Fundraising prowess is always an indication that the people’s needs will not be met.” Two and one half years later, Adams not only proved BAR’s analysis of his politics to be correct, but his administration is dangling by a thread.

Boeing Pleads Guilty To Criminal Fraud: The Continuing 737 Max Saga

July 14, 2024 Prabir Purkayastha, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge regarding the two crashes of 737 Max airplanes that caused the death of 346 passengers on two flights: a Lion Air flight out of Indonesia in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. Though Boeing had tried hard to convince the world that these accidents occurred due to poorly trained pilots in the third world, there was overwhelming evidence that Boeing had made significant changes to the flight control systems while hiding them from the US Federal Aviation Administration and the concerned airlines. The Seattle Times, which has done the most work in detailing the cause of the crashes and the failure of Boeing and the federal aviation regulator, described the settlement, “The plea deal… calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6 million fine.

Hunter Biden’s Charge Of Lying Under Oath

June 20, 2024 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. , , , , ,
One reads regularly in the mainstream media, when events force them to report on the question, that the U.S. House Oversight Committee has hit a wall as it investigates Hunter Biden’s schemes to leverage his father’s power and Joe Biden’s potentially impeachable role in his son’s unseemly doings. The House hearings have stalled, or fizzled, or reached a dead end: This has been the standard theme in corporate media for months now. “Wouldn’t you know it,” Michael Goodwin asked in The New York Post as far back as March, “CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico and others on the left all reached exactly the same conclusion at the same time.”

How A Network Of Nonprofits Enriches Fundraisers

June 18, 2024 Ellis Simani, ProPublica. , , ,
In September 2020, the Federal Trade Commission joined regulators in four states to sue four men behind a notorious telemarketing company called Outreach Calling. The FTC alleged that the company, which it described as a “sprawling fundraising operation,” had raised millions on the promise of helping the needy — cancer patients, veterans, firefighters — but instead used the money to line its pockets. The case was meant to put fundraisers on notice. The FTC would not only go after charities that improperly spent donor dollars, but it would “aggressively pursue their fundraisers who participate in the deception,” a news release said.

State Agency Met Privately With Oil-By-Rail Firm Ahead Of Permitting

May 14, 2024 Nick Cunningham, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
Oregon state environmental regulators are deciding whether to issue an air permit for a contested oil-by-rail operation in Portland, a site that received local approval after a deal worked out in private between the company and city officials. Now, new documents show that the state agency also met privately with the company before the application was submitted.  The agency said the meeting was informational and involved no commitments. But for groups that oppose oil-by-rail in Portland, the documents add to the sense that multiple layers of government are favoring the company’s interests over public health and safety. 
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